


shade and essence of corroding time

by kimaracretak



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Gen, POV Multiple, ambiguity and the deliberate cultivation thereof, horror qua ambiguity, how to mourn your own death when you aren't really dead, i would sorta tag this bechdel test pass but there's not really traditional dialogue, identities and their multiplicities, mildly fey psi corps, not precisely angst but definitely dark, possession of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-14 06:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7157375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(the violet prison for violent visions / and so the broken record plays): Susan throws sharp broken pieces of her weak untrained mind at you, searching for any trace of her lover. Say to her: The Talia you knew no longer exists. Real, because you say so. Not true, not until it suits you.</p><p>Or; Talia doesn't die when Control takes over. Talia <em>watches</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shade and essence of corroding time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariestess/gifts).



> title from katatonia, 'serein', summary quote from the birthday massacre, 'violet'
> 
> nosekisses to catherine for a truly wonderful beta

In the future, Talia will describe this by saying: _there's a woman in your head and she wants to kill you._

And then she will stop, revise, because that isn't right at all, and she will correct herself by saying: _there's a woman in your head and she's taken over your body and she thinks it's hers and she's you, except for the part where you're entirely irrelevant to her._

And then Talia feels her lips curl into a smile crueler than any she's ever worn and she stops thinking about the future.

Stops thinking, period.

 

***

 

In a kinder world, that might have been the end. But she has known very few kindnesses in her days, known even fewer to come from whatever uninterested hand guides the path of her life.

There's a woman in Talia's head and she — and she —

And she's there with Talia, speaks instead of Talia, carries cosmic hurts to be handed out to Talia's friends like poisoned candies.

Talia has no eyes anymore, no ears and no mouth, but when she makes Talia watch and listen Talia _screams._

 

***

 

You have a body again and you're real again.

No. You have a body for the first time and now everyone knows you're real. You were real inside her head, thought you were more powerful than her even then, but now you know real power comes from making them all believe your own, new, better reality. The root of all power is still your mind, but the excitement that comes from having fingers and a mouth of your own to make it manifest —

— oh, you'd never known it could be like this.

Flip her hands: palms up, palms down. Yours. Real.

Curl her lips: smile, frown. Yours. Real.

Susan throws sharp broken pieces of her weak untrained mind at you, searching for any trace of her lover. Say to her: _The Talia you knew no longer exists._

Real, because you say so.

Not true, not until it suits you.

Lyta comes with apologies, the sweet stupid girl who would run into death's arms for the sake of justice but can't figure out that the Corps will give her the second with no need for the first. Say to her: _You're a traitor, darling, but you set me free so I think I'll let you run a bit longer before I take you home._

Real, because you want it to be.

True, because you are so much better at keeping promises than Talia ever was.

 

***

 

Talia understands very quickly that the Control personality is a much stronger telepath than she ever was. They make sense, then, the throbbing twisting _aches_  that had hummed deep inside her head and never come close enough to the surface to be considered proper headaches: reverberating echoes of a brain twisting itself into new shapes the easier to be bent to _that woman's_  will, energy and power collecting, waiting, ready to be thrown out and remake the world the way the Corps wants it to be.

Her mind is timeless, now, violent as she slides down new paths, analyses thoughts that aren't hers but are more at home here now than she will ever be allowed to be again, and she runs —

— she runs away from —

— Lyta asked her to run away, once. Susan had told her that she _could_ , if only she could be brave, or less stupidly blind. It took her too long, in the end, to realise that she _wanted_  to run.

Talia flies through thoughts and sensations and presses against her body's temples, eyes, flings herself against skin and bone as if she could catapult herself out of this body and into some state where she can fight against Control and have half a chance of winning.

It's not fair, really. This mind was hers for so much longer than it was ever Control's. She should have the advantage, for that reason if none other.

But it's not hers anymore.

 

***

 

One of Talia's teachers at the Academy once scolded her for playing with her food. It was before you came along, but you had years of sharing her mind, and replaying her old memories was a source of great educational entertainment. The problem, you think, is that little Talia was interested in _creating_  with her food: towers and monsters and great spaceships doing battle across her plates.

Playing for destruction is ever so much more fun.

You build her a cell and she spits at you, ungrateful, as if she would have rather died when you rose up in answer to Lyta's inadvertent call. As if she thinks she would be better off without you there to teach her, guide her, train her until maybe she proves herself worthy enough to be granted another body, another chance to serve the Corps. As if she would be something closer to free if you had swallowed her whole right to start with.

Look at her projected self. Smile at her. Be somewhat less cruel now; she is, after all, something of a sister to you.

Say to her: _Your friends are so pretty when they cry._

Say to her: _But you, darling, you could be the most glorious of them all._

She sends smoking, curling tendrils of thought through the bars, thorned vines looking for you, for your weakness. She won't find any, not in you, not when all your weaknesses have been carefully burned and molded out of you. Still she tries, and the attempt is sweet, misdirected as it is.

She could be so, so good one day. After all, she has you to help her now.

 

***

 

Talia's not dead. She reminds herself of this whenever she can, a low droning chant that works its way under Control's thoughts and doesn't fight but _holds_. She's not dead, and that means there's hope.

Well. There might be hope, if she were _alive_. She's not really that either.

Talia doesn't have tear ducts anymore, but the memory of what it is to cry tangles itself into every other thought that floats by. _I hope you choke on it_ , she thinks to Control. Prods halfheartedly at the links to arteries in her body's throat, wonders if she could close them off, kill Control as well as herself. She rather doubts she was meant to survive Control's emergence, anyway.

Control just chuckles in response. _You're welcome to try, darling, but then I would have to give you a much less nice cell, and neither of us want that, do we?_

It's worse, knowing that Control — _likes_  her. Wants to keep her around. Talia's not an idiot, she'd seen the wars brewing before they left Babylon 5, knew what it meant to be so close to so many military officers. She would have died for her friends, she thinks. Would maybe even have died for the Corps, once.

But Talia feels Control move through space with an ease she's never going to have again, floats silent locked away while the woman with her face and her voice and her _mind_ prepares for the future and —

— and witnessing memories was always so _so_  hard but she hasn't seen any that she hasn't chosen in so long and —

— she'd never known being made a witness to the future would _hurt_.

 

***

 

You don't like her name. _Ta-li-a_ , deep and sing-song mischievous, like it's a sweet and a promise and a gift too freely given. Too many people know that name, Talia too reliant on the badge and gloves of the Psi Corps to shield her from the dangers of leaving something so precious where anyone could find it.

Silly girl. _You're_ protecting her now, until she either learns her lesson or proves herself completely unworthy of that protection.

Say to the people outside: _We're going to remake the world._

Say to her: _And if you're very good, darling, you might live in it as well._

You'll need a new name, of course. Your sister-self is many things, but she isn't you, and you aren't her. There can only be one of you.

One of you, and a hundred thousand times one of you to follow you into the light, into the arms of the Corps that is Mother and Father and the last line against the Shadows in the dark. The dark of the mind and the dark of the void are not so dissimilar, and they are both yours.

You _Control_. It's your name, your job, your destiny, but keeping only one name for all three is just as careless as giving it out.

But really, the way Talia _howls_ in her cage when you step off the shuttle at a safe haven on a Rim colony that hasn't heard the news from the station and introduce yourself as "Talia Winters, licensed commercial telepath"? Maybe you can keep that name a _little_ bit longer.

**Author's Note:**

> .... i had no idea how much i wanted to write fic about control!talia until i read your letter. thank you for such interesting prompts, and i hope you enjoy the fic despite how dark i ended up taking it!


End file.
